Comcast and Charter fight for right to charge “exorbitant prices” for broadband connectivity

Comcast’s and Charter Communications’ lobbying front in Sacramento – the California Cable and Telecommunications Association (CCTA) – doesn’t want the California Public Utilities Commission to require companies that receive broadband infrastructure subsidies to make any commitments about the prices consumers will be charged, or to offer an “affordable broadband plan for low income customers”.

The lobbyists also told the CPUC that it can’t limit Charter’s and Comcast’s right to charge “exorbitant prices” for middle mile connectivity and, in the process, block competition by independent broadband providers.

CCTA objected to a new rule that would allow streamlined review of middle mile proposals in “a situation where a provider…only offers service at exorbitant prices”. Their claim is that “affordability” has nothing to do with the “availability” of middle mile service.

Bullshit.

Middle mile service links a local broadband provider – aka the “last mile” – to a major hub, such as a data center in Silicon Valley, where interconnections between networks are thick and the magic of the Internet happens. If an independent Internet service provider wants to build a last mile network in a poorly served community, the middle mile connectivity problem has to be solved in way that makes economic sense. When incumbents, like Charter, Comcast, AT&T or Frontier, kill an independent’s business model by jacking up middle mile prices – as they are allowed to do – they are deliberately making that service unavailable.

CCTA also continued to argue for the right to perpetually and continually challenge proposed projects. Derailing project applications with late challenges, sometimes based on false claims, is a tried and true tactic that incumbents use to protect their monopolies in communities where 1. their service is poor, and 2. so are residents.

The cable companies have never liked the CASF infrastructure subsidy program, and they have handed bags of cash offered cerebral arguments against it to California’s lawmakers in largely successful attempts to cripple it.

CCTA’s comments are worth reading as a reminder of why the CASF program was created in the first place.